CBS News: A Source of Contention By Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff and Anne Belli Gesalman Newsweek
Sept. 27 issue - CBS insiders are increasingly worried that the credibility of the network's news division has been grievously damaged by anchor Dan Rather's persistent defense of a story which relied on questionable documents about George W. Bush's National Guard service. "This has clearly hurt us," one veteran correspondent told NEWSWEEK. Network sources describe finger-pointing within the news division, with concerns greatest among "60 Minutes" producers, who fear the issue has tainted their entire program. While CBS News president Andrew Heyward has publicly backed Rather, the network has quietly assembled a team of additional producers to work the case. Rather is privately telling colleagues he remains "confident" that the story, and the memos, will be vindicated.
One problem is that the network has not explained where the purported Texas National Guard records have been for the last 30 years and why they happened to surface in the closing weeks of a presidential campaign. Emily Will, a documents expert approached by CBS to examine the memos, told NEWSWEEK that she was told by a CBS News producer that the network's source had received the memos anonymously through the mail. Intense scrutiny has centered on the role of William Burkett, a former National Guard official who charged last February that he saw Bush Guard documents in a trash can in 1997—an allegation that Guard officials strongly denied. A source who worked with CBS on the story said Burkett was identified by a producer as a conduit for the documents. Three days before the broadcast, Burkett e-mailed a friend that there was "a real heavy situation regarding Bush's records" about to break. "He was having a lot of fun with this," said the friend, Dennis Adams. Burkett told a visitor that after the story ran, Rather phoned him and expressed his and the network's "full support." CBS has declined to comment on the sourcing of the network's story. Burkett's lawyer told the press his client would never "condone forgery," but did not respond to detailed questions posed by NEWSWEEK. Burkett himself refused to talk to reporters camped outside his house last week, although he did tell a journalist that since he began speaking out, unnamed assailants had killed his dog and threatened to rape his wife.
White House aides say Burkett has serious credibility problems. Internet sleuths last week discovered that Burkett had been a regular contributor to a Texas Democratic Web site; in one posting a few days before the CBS story, he wrote "There is no doubt that Kerry can't win this election without us." A biographical sketch appended to another anti-Bush essay Burkett posted on an Internet site in late August describes him as "one of the sources" for Michael Moore's anti-Bush film "Fahrenheit 9/11." Former Democratic senator Max Cleland confirmed that he got a call from Burkett in mid-August offering "valuable" information about Bush. He told Burkett to contact the Kerry campaign. A Kerry campaign official said the campaign could find no record of any contacts with Burkett. The campaign official acknowledged that the CBS docs are probably forgeries—a frustrating development, the official said, because it has distracted attention from legitimate questions about Bush's Guard service.
